The smartest technology companies and most progressive MLSs are leading our industry to a new era of efficiency and profitability. They are making it easy for start-ups to expand quickly from market to market and serve the innovation needs of brokers. These leaders are supporting well-established companies to evolve their data platforms and opening the door for standardization in EVERY market in the country.
In talking with various people inside brokerages, I hear the same challenge time and time again. "My data is all over the place and I have no way to figure out what it means." Driving information out of your data is Business Intelligence (BI). There are free or low-cost solutions to help analyze data in your control and derive the answers needed to make better business decisions.
This Flashback Features series unearths profiles from the past of real estate and technology leaders. A version of this story was first published in California Real Estate magazine. This profile of Craigslist founder Craig Newmark is from 2006. By Kevin Hawkins Craig Newmark, the Internet’s reluctant mogul, makes his daily visit to Café Reverie in the Cole Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. He has dog biscuits in his pockets and a ready smile for the next little child that he encounters.
WAV GROUP has gotten acquainted with myPlanit and it's CEO Adrienne Meisels. Adrienne is a fantastic person who is super smart and developing a very creative application that lets agents look at a map to see the places they have gone (like listing appointments, open houses, etc) and visualize their journey on a timeline. It's a lot more than that, but you can appreciate how this example would benefit an agent. Adrienne uses the term The Internet of You. myPlanit does the work for you by privately and securely tracking the things that you do, for you. Inman News gave [...]
In an announcement made to their membership, Leading Real Estate Companies of the World® (LeadingRE) have entered into a definitive agreement with MoxiWorks® to provide LeadingRE Cloud™ to their 565+ brokerage members. The solution is called LeadingRE Cloud. Franchises and networks like LeadingRE have been providing data services for their brokers over decades. No doubt, the most notorious version is the legacy CREST system at Realogy Holdings Corporation®. Keller Williams® CEO, Gary Keller has kicked off a Billion dollar investment in technology. RE/MAX® is in a process to buy a company or outsource to a vendor. Berkshire Hathaway Home Services® has [...]
We’re starting to see the impact of a new leadership team at the National Association of REALTORS® led by Bob Goldberg, a strategic, yet practical leader that is SERIOUS about making the industry function more effectively. He also seems to be critically evaluating every investment in technology and making some bold moves to re-focus efforts. NAR announced yesterday that is shutting down development on its Advanced Multilist Platform, or AMP. AMP was under development for a few years at a burn rate of $6 Million per year. The concept behind AMP was solid – consolidate MLS data into a single [...]
Circlepix has sold everything. They operated an extensive network of photographers that they sold to VHT Studios in January. Now they have sold the rest of their company to Inside Real Estate. If you have not followed Inside Real Estate lately – pay attention. Inside Real Estate is the incredible company that recently landed Keyes – one of the largest firms in South East Florida among others. They are taking a piecemeal approach to purchasing world class software providers to complete their suite of an end-to-end solution for brokers, teams, and agents. At the heart of Inside Real Estate is [...]
Twitter for real estate is a curious strategy. There was quite a bit of discussion about Twitter in some of the Facebook groups that I am in. #thatsfunny. In all seriousness, when WAV Group evaluates the effectiveness of social media marketing and advertising (those are two different things), the numbers prove out that Facebook is far more effective in every matrix of reporting. The data suggests that Facebook is core, Twitter is niche. If you do market on Twitter as part of your surround sound system, you likely already know that Twitter extended the number of characters from the old [...]
In the press release below, CoreLogic announces a partnership with SavvyCard that will allow CoreLogic MLSs to consider this new optional service. As you may recall, CoreLogic has been focused on enhancing the buyer portal within Matrix to make is a more full-service solution for agents providing MLS information to their clients. On the mobile side, this is also accomplished with GoMLS. This new service is an alternative that combines a variety of important agent applications into a unique and simplified service that has some outstanding connectivity to social media marketing. According to Chirs Bennett, General Manager of Real Estate [...]
“Let’s modernize IDX by linking to the listing broker!” IDX or Internet Data Exchange is a thesis that was developed by the collaboration between Brokers and MLSs that outlines a set of display rules for listings on broker websites. The idea behind IDX is that of cooperation among brokers. Fundamentally, the IDX policy states that a broker allows all other brokers participating in an MLS to display their listings on any broker (and usually Agent) website. Over the years, the IDX policy has evolved. And today, Redfin CEO, Glenn Kelman suggests a radical new change. Kelman would like the IDX [...]
The smart money is on brokers who figure out how to differentiate themselves online by leveraging MLS data in new and exciting ways. Brokers really DO have the power to take back their leadership position online if they fully take advantage of the rich and engaging MLS data that is available today. What’s the best way to learn how to make your website more interesting than other online sources? Learn how to leverage standardized real estate information that has been built by the Real Estate Standards Organization. Thanks to the great work of four brokers that serve on the RESO [...]
Financial and budget planning concept with calculator notebook and financial chart report on work desk How many of have been informed that need to spend the rest of your budget or its going to be reduced next year? How many times have you blindly hit copy and paste and then added a bit for inflation and an unexpected project and then called it a day on your budgeting process? If you’re walking somewhat blindly through your budgeting process then you’re practicing what we call “business-as-usual budgeting”. What’s that? Well, if your typical budgeting practice is to look at last year’s [...]
